The Coercion Bug, 14-g3
by Four F and Fanfics
Summary: Marlene has now been declared clean of virus 14-3g. Animals don't usually recall what happens to them, but she begins to remember what happened when she was infected... what was Skipper doing in her habitat the night she was affected anyway?


"It's lucky we found this bug, Marlene, before something really bad happened." Kowalski put the test tubes away. Marlene hopped off the table, smiling.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Imagine if the badgers came back and tried to make me do all sorts of crazy activities again... or if somebody bad tried to make me do things!" She shuddered.

"That's right, Marlene. Nothing happened." Skipper turned away and held his flippers behind his back. "Absolutely nothing. You're well now; nothing to worry about. Hop along now, Marlene, we're busy."

Marlene stared at him. Something hadn't been right about him since Kowalski identified the bug in her system a few hours ago. He had been sort of... down. And harsh. She supposed it was one of his paranoia moments, and assumed he was just worried that more animals could get sick from the virus, or that it was actually placed there by somebody with a malicious intent. She waved goodbye to the penguins and left for her own habitat.

After a quick swim (the pool was already been declared clean of the virus by Kowalski), she padded into the tunnel towards her stone shelf bed. When she sat down on it, however, she as hit by a vague memory of Skipper standing over her... it was fuzzy. Was he saying something? Then it was gone. Strange, she thought.

* * *

"Fascinating," Kowalski murmured. "And it happened only the once?"

"Yeah." Marlene scratched her head. She turned to Skipper. "What _were_ you doing in my habitat last night, anyway?"

"Ah, nothing much," he said evasively, not meeting her eye. "Just, y'know... checking the passages between our habitats in case of emergency. Asking questions. Stuff like that."

"Didn't we check that last week, Skippah?" Private inquired sweetly.

Skipped looked around, appearing slightly panicked. His voice was however calm when he said, "You can never be too careful, Private." Marlene noticed his chest feathers were ruffled. Strange, she thought again. He's usually so neat.

Kowalski captured her attention again. "I think we should take a walk around your room for stimuli and see if more memories come to the surface," he said. "The bug that infected you seems to be a rare strain or mutation of virus 14-g3 which, although having the same effects during the actual infection, seems to allow some recollection of the events which occur... I will call this mutated strain 14-g3b."

* * *

She watched Skipper pacing out of the corner of her eye as she walked around. Occasionally flashes of memory, fuzzy and garbled, would hit her and she would relay them to Kowalski, who would scribble reams of text on his notepad from simple things like 'I looked at my guitar' or 'I scratched my knee'.

"What we need," Kowalski concluded, "is to re-infect you. No, to infect another animal... you may be immune, or it may affect you differently the second time... but what if it only works on otters?" He muttered to himself for a while, scribbling and crossing-out on his pad.

Marlene looked over at Skipper. She was surprised to see him preening his shoulder with his beak, something she had never seen him do before, and a sudden memory came to the fore of her mind. She closed her eyes.

In her memory, Skipper ran his beak over his shoulders and then dipped his head to preen his chest... finally he tossed his head back and shook it like she had seen penguins do before... it looked so strange to see Skipper doing it that she laughed. She looked back over at the present Skipper and her laugh died away.

He was looking at her with a mixture of guilt and something which looked like apprehension, and he seemed started by her amusement too.

"What did you see, Marlene?" Skipper tilted his head to the side slightly.

Kowalski cleared his throat after a few seconds of silence. Marlene said to him, turning her back on Skipper, "I saw... Skipper, preening himself. He shook his head back too. It... looked funny."

"Ah... his usual afternoon preen," Kowalski said with a smile. That, too, faded under his superior's glare. "Er... it was a clear recollection this time?"

"Yes," she said, trying to remember more. "I can't remember anything before or after it, though."

"That's all right, Marlene, at the rate you're going, you'll remember everything by tomorrow." He resumed scribbling. For some reason, Skipper seemed worried by this news. He resumed pacing with an even more anxious expression.

Several minutes elapsed before Marlene had another vision.

Skipper was standing by the grate, looking down into it... he turned to face her and told her to do something. He looked like he was telling a joke. Marlene remembered herself answering affirmatively...

"Another clear one," she told Kowalski, opening her eyes. "Skipper was... standing by the grate. He said something." She saw the present one turn his head sharply to look at her again. "I can't remember what he told me to do. But I responded 'yes'..."

"Part of the 'coercion' effect of the virus. It's strange that you remember only sight... brains have, after all, three types of memory cell. Only your sight memory seems to be active at this time, but perhaps with certain stimuli we could hack into your sound and feel memories too..."

By this time Marlene was beginning to feel tired. A headache was just starting to take hold and she needed sleep. "I think we should continue this tomorrow, guys..."

Kowalski looked stricken. "But what if your most detailed memory yet comes while you are alone, and you forget to tell us?"

Skipper glowered at him. "She said she needs sleep. We'll come by tomorrow morning, Marlene, and see what you remember." He swept past her into the tunnel without looking at her. His men followed him. Marlene sighed and rubbed her eyes, then laid down on her shelf with a yawn.

* * *

Marlene opened her eyes, feeling wide awake. It was still dark outside.

She sat up and wound her arms around her knees. Something was on the edge of her mind, something big, but every time she reached for it, it scattered, elusive, like the name of a friend from years ago. She struggled with it for a few minutes, then sighed and turned her thoughts to Skipper's strange behaviour -

Then it hit her, in small flashes of images and long bits of movement and speech. His actions were replayed in fragments, broken and in a series of non-chronological shorts. She could tell, finally, what Skipper had been saying to her. And she was shocked to discover what it was.

Some of his actions and words struck her so hard she wanted to cry, while others made her want to forgive him for the rest. Some frightened her, others... comforted her. But the things the virus made her go along with would never have happened if she had been in full control. Or would they? No... surely not...

She had given him the impression that she wanted to hear what he had to say, that she wanted to do everything he suggested... he hadn't known she was under the effects of 14-whatever; he thought she genuinely wanted to talk about that...

She laid back down, knowing full well that she would not tell anyone about what she remembered. She would never mention this to anyone. In a way, she owed Skipper for what he said and did, how they really connected. She would repay him by keeping the secret. Pretending it had never happened. She wasn't altogether sure what she would have preferred, to know or to not, either. She just hoped the results of Kowalski's 14-stuff experiments didn't tell him she was lying when she told him she didn't remember anything else.


End file.
